AppReviewToday- AppReviews

It takes a lot to get me excited about a word game these days. In a post-Wordle world, the bar is just higher than it used to be. That said, a game like Catagrams meets that bar when it comes to providing an interesting daily challenge. There's more to it than that, but I'm not sure that it meets my own standards, personally.

Scrabble with cats and yarn

The concept for Catagrams looks very familiar for anyone who's played Scrabble or Bananagrams. You have letter tiles spread out across a grid, and it's your job to make words out of them.

As opposed to being competitive, Catagrams is a solo experience, but there's a twist to its word-making challenges: Each tile given to you had a unique thread on it, and you can only make words with tiles with matching threads. This ends up making each puzzle interconnected like a crossword puzzle, but instead of clues to help you figure out the letters the threads give you hints for laying out the letters you have.

Costume cats

The cat aspect of Catagrams is mostly just theming. Outside of any given puzzle, you'll see a cozy living room setup with a cat napping in a chair. Tapping on various pieces of decor takes you to a certain cat-themed level backdrop where you can complete puzzles to fill out the scenes with more stuff.

Each of the puzzles in these levels are procedurally generated, and you as the player have control over things like how many words you want to solve for, what their max length should be, and if you want to use harder words or not. Making things more complicated and harder grants you greater progress toward completing scenes.

Purrfectly playable, but not personal

Catagrams is an ad-supported free-to-play game at a baseline, but you can pay to remove ads, as well as unlock an “unlimited play” more and a special winter bonus level. For my money, the ad removal purchase is a no-brainer at $1.99 but it's also hard to resist the full unlock “treat package” option, especially considering half of the proceeds from that purchase go toward cat rescue services.

My only gripe with the game (if you can even call it one), is the procedural nature of its puzzles. Perhaps I am just spoiled by things like Puzzmo, but I like taking on a challenge that feels hand-crafted. Catagrams gets close to feeling like that with its daily puzzle, which at least feels communal in some way, and even closer by providing information about whether your puzzle solution matches the intended answer or not, but outside of that the more traditional puzzle unlock progression feels a little too much like having to make your own fun.

The bottom line

It's very possible that the “make your own challenge” nature of Catagrams that I personally am not in love with is exactly what you are looking for. Even if it isn't, this puzzle game is smart, adorable, and can give you a satisfying daily challenge.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/catagrams-review/

I've always like the idea of a mobile game taking advantage of something like your step count or other data to fuel or integrate with gameplay. That said, I am not sure I have ever really found something that really pushes all the right buttons for making this click. Prado Traveler is probably the closest thing to what I'd want to see out of a pedometer-based rpg, and that's good enough for me considering the fact that it is completely free.

Walking simulator

Prado Traveler is an rpg where you make a character and send them out on adventures to gain loot and experience. There's not really any story and a lot of the draw is just grinding out more levels and loot to let you go to tougher locales. It's very boilerplate and rote outside of the fact that the whole thing can only progress by walking around.

Each location in Prado Traveler is represented by a deck of cards, which have a random distribution of events in them (usually skill checks and fights), and your goal is to be able to complete these decks without being defeated to earn the most rewards possible. The catch is that each card flip costs a certain amount of steps, which is tied into the step counter of your mobile device.

Pedestrian progression

Smartly (in my view, anyway), the core “gameplay” in Prado Traveler is walking. There is no real interactivity with combat or skill checks, nor do you do a ton of character building as you level up. All of that takes care of itself automatically. That said, between adventures you can visit shops to upgrade your gear, buy components for potions and/or food, and–of course–open and examine the loot from your latest adventure.

If for any reason you are away from the app for awhile, Prado Traveler has a system for banking a certain amount of steps, so you are rarely in a situation where you earn a bunch of steps that can't be used to further your adventures or go on a new one. There are also party mechanics for multiplayer and a PvP mode but I could not get either of those to work and they seem like game modes that are largely impractical anyway.

Stepping awkwardly

Speaking of things not working, Prado Traveler definitely has quite a few problems with it. In addition to certain game modes or menus not really loading properly, there have been times where the app hasn't been able to initially load and others where I completed an adventure and the loot I earned failed to appear in my inventory.

These are pretty glaring problems, but I find it hard to get too upset about them considering the game is so low-stakes and free. My bigger problem is that it seems clear that some of the game's visuals are AI-generated, which sucks ass. I don't know what the plan for this game is for further development or sustainability, but if it makes any amount of money, the first thing the developer should do is find an artist and pay them to do some art for it.

The bottom line

Maybe I am being too forgiving of a game that doesn't work all that well, but there's something about Prado Traveler's low bar of entry that makes a lot of its issues not seem like huge sticking points. This is a game I can open up after being out and about all day and get a new sword or something as I track my progress of dungeon-crawling and step-counting, and I don't have to think too hard about any of that, provided the app is working.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/prado-traveler-review/